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Kits are great all-in-one bundles that make perfect gifts, holiday projects, or just as a way to get started with something. Most of our range of kits blend creativity and making with electronics and coding.

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This is where you'll find all sorts of handy bits and bobs for your projects, or just to stock up your kit box. Wires, LEDs, speakers, power supplies, header pins, sensors, integrated circuits, you name it!

Picade

The ultimate desktop retro arcade machine! Picade is a Raspberry Pi-powered mini arcade that you build yourself, with authentic arcade controls, a high resolution 4:3 display that's ideal for retro gaming, and a punchy speaker to hear those 8-bit game soundtracks at their best

NOW AVAILABLE WITH LARGER 10-INCH DISPLAY, OR AS AN UPGRADE KIT FOR YOUR EXISTING PICADE!

The all-new Picade has been completely redesigned, from the inside out! There's new artwork, a new display and display driver board, dedicated power button, an all-new Picade X HAT, easier wiring, easier access to the interior of the cabinet, beautiful new packaging, a bunch of extra goodies (stickers and an enamel Picade pin), and a gorgeous Picade poster and assembly instructions.

Picade comes in kit form, and it'll take around two to three hours to build. The cabinet is made from powder-coated MDF, giving it a quality look and feel similar to a full-size arcade. All you'll need to add is a Raspberry Pi, power supply, and micro-SD card.

Extras

What's new!?

The cabinet is more compact, so it fits more neatly on your desk, but has a higher resolution 8" or 10" display (1024x768). The display is driven by a new Pimoroni-designed and manufactured driver board, with keypad controls. It's an IPS panel, so it looks great from any viewing angle!

The all-new Picade X HAT is packed full of useful features. We've moved from more fiddly screw terminals to simple DuPont connectors that just push in, and the speaker terminals are the same easy push-fit connectors that we use on pHAT BEAT.

There's dedicated power management on-board Picade X HAT; just plug your micro-USB power supply into the HAT and it'll power your Pi through its pins. The power button connected to the HAT means that once your Pi is safely shutdown, the power will be cut completely to the Pi. A simple press of the power button will boot your Picade up again.

The new buttons in Picade are lower profile, and the new joystick has a single connector rather than the eight spade connectors on our previous Picade joystick.

A gorgeous new neon-look Picade logo on the marquee, and rainbow stripes on the console and screen-surround, evoke classic consoles, as do the assembly instructions and poster.

Building your Picade

We hope the included assembly instructions have everything you need to build your Picade, but we've also filmed a complete build video of Picade that you can watch as you build and learn some handy tips and tricks. It's below.

Software setup

Connect a USB keyboard to your Pi, and connect to Wi-Fi in the RetroPie menu. Press F4 to exit to the terminal and then type curl https://get.pimoroni.com/picadehat | bash to run the Picade HAT installer.

Reboot your Pi, if it doesn't prompt you to. Press the "Alt" key on your keyboard and then select "Configure input" to configure your Picade's controls. You'll find that the sound and power button should both be working now too!

Notes

If your Picade display doesn't show anything when you first power it up, then it could be because the HDMI display is not being detected by the Raspberry Pi. This can happen because power isn't supplied to the USB ports on the Raspberry Pi for the first few seconds of booting. The solution is to edit the /boot/config.txt file on your RetroPie SD card, and add hdmi_force_hotplug=1 on a new line at the bottom of the file.

If you'd like to design your own artwork for your Picade, then we've made a handy PDF that has the outlines and dimensions of the marquee, screen shim, and console. You can download it from the Picade HAT GitHub repo here.

Reviews

A well made set of pieces which is easy to assemble. Nice set of addon stickers to personalise your Picade is included. I had connected the joystick the wrong way first. Here some improved markings on the cable would be an improvement but else no issues at all. Perfect for the coffee corner in the office.

Anonymous

Anonymous

KONSTANTINOS KONTOVOUNISIOS

Jean Quilici

Julien Bigaul

Such a lovely little piece of memory. Easy to built, Stylish, even the box now sit in site on my desk...

Stuart Laycock

Lovely piece of kit! Had it built in 2 hours and have been having no end of fun since. Easy to follow instructions and handy build it video make sure that the build stayed hassle free and pitfalls avoided. Very good value for money and the fact that no soldering is required makes it a no brainer in terms of a do it yourself kit. Authentic microswitch joystick and fast response buttons make this feel like the arcade. Make me nostalgic for the Taito Egret II I used to own but in a good way!
You won't be disappointed with this kit.

jerome TARBOURIECH

Perfect

Mark Leslie

Really nicely engineered kit that was a real pleasure to put together.

Karen Keen

Bought as a gift for my partner. I know he's going to love it. Would've given 5 stars if I hadn't had an email a week later saying it was now £20 cheaper! Took the shine of it a bit!

Excellent kit was fun to assemble I also used the video guide as well which made assembly a little easier. Now all up and running and loving it thought screen may be too small but it’s ideal and is ultra portable. Highly recommended

Tim Redhead

Just to note I bought from Pimoroni together everything needed for the Picade setup. This included
-Raspberry Pi 3 B+
-Offical Raspberry Pi Universal Power Supply
-Picade
-(I already had source the memory card)
Amazing quality of everything included in the Picade product. The box/materials/instructions feels like a high class premium product. I built the unit with my partner and had so much fun building together. The instructions are really clear and printed on high quality paper. The quality of the IPS screen is phenomenal. The viewing angles from above and the sides is crisp and very impressive. The sound produced from the speakers provded are clear and don't distort at higher volumes. Also it's so crisp with all the games I tested(Streets of Rage in particular!) Setting up the software was easy to follow from Pimoroni resources. Expect to want to customise the game loader styles and also the ability to have menu music in the game selection screen. The best part about the Picade is that you feel comfortable with the components and will surely leave you with ideas to enhance your picade!(Large battery for gaming on the go! Or I did see that Pimoroni just released gorgeous plasma arcade buttons!). Just to also note the communication from Pimoroni has been top notch, I did have one issue with one of the buttons but a replacement was sent out straight away and the service was superb.
If you are looking for a classy high quality arcade cabient that is not going to take up a huge amount of space, I would highly recommend the Picade.
Thanks again all the team at Pimoroni for an amazing product.

Felice Ferrari

Dany Da Silva

I picked up my package today and built the Picade.
Unfortunatelly two black buttons are missing.

Hi Dany,
I'm really sorry to hear that! Please drop a line to support@pimoroni.com and we'll get replacements sent out right away!

Jonathan Gibbins

This is a great bit of kit and not only is great for educational value, teaching kids how machines are physically built, it's great to give it a hammering for some games too!
Stick the latest Raspberry Pi board in too and you can use bluetooth to add a second controller too.
In some places the instructions were a bit unclear as to what exactly you had to do until you managed to do it but that's all part of the fun of building things from scratch I guess!
It's a great little project to build. once you've built the machine, the software bit is where it gets interesting!

Carl Peters

This is beautiful. It was very therapeutic and relaxing to build. Not too tricky and not too easy. All of the components had clearly been well thought through during design and the clicky joystick is like catnip to any gamer.

a cheap but expertly engineered, designed and crafted kit for the ultimate retro arcade gamer. detailed and sensible instructions make building it a breeze.

John Masseria

Very nice design that was not too difficult to build. You need to pay close attention to which screws are to be used. The instructions do say to use M3, M2.5 or the flat head screws, but again you need to pay attention.
I did have to manually edit the /boot/config.txt file to force the use of the HDMI otherwise I had a blank screen. Perhaps an errata sheet should be included that talks about that. However, a quick Google search did provide the fix.
It also took me some time poking around in Retropie to figure out how to lower the volume. I am still confused over how to configure the buttons on the Picade in Retropie. Retropie has dozens (if not more) of functions that can be programmed, but there are only 12 buttons on the Picade available so I'm unsure what the optimal configuration would be.
Finally, I noticed that the power button on my unit doesn't light up. I was expecting that since there was an LED connection to the power button that the button would light up when powered on. I did try reversing the polarity of the LED connection but that cause the unit to not power up at all or at least that was my experience.
Also, I found connecting a Wireless RII Keyboard useful in setting up the WiFi. I guess even a wired keyboard would also work.
All-in-all I really like my Picade. I need to now experiment with the various emulators that Retropie provides. We have Galaga working so my wife is happy.

Stephen Thornber

Superb product, great build quality and Pimoroni were very helpful and went above and beyond when I had problems.
I would highly recommend this to any fan of retro games and the old classic arcade games. Playing games like Mr Do, Dig Dug, Wizard of Wor, Galaxians etc etc on the picade is a real joy and the new improved model is really a step up from the old picade (I've had both!)
Highly recommended!

Felice Ferrari

Benjamin Smyth

Finally got the courage to buy this kit as I have a short attention span and although being technically inclined, I've never built one of these before!
Opening the box I was really pleased to see the sheer quality of the packaging, as well as the very well thought-out organisation of the components - the little gifts included were a really nice touch too.
The cabinet panels, acrylics and buttons were very well made & packaged, premium quality and nothing missing. If I were forced to criticize, I would say the screws etc could have been more clearly identifiable & mentioned better in the instructions. The artwork which goes in the Marquee/controls/bezel isn't amazing quality, but this doesn't matter once it's put together.
After having a lot of fun & lessons learned throughout the construction process, the first hurdle was clear, the next challenge was getting the software in order to 'speak' to the components' functionality... This took a couple of attempts; but these little challenges are what it's all about.
There are many similar kits out there that look very nice, but I chose this kit as it looks like less of a school project and more like a worthy tribute to the dying pastime of upright arcade gaming. Great price for a very nice product, you can tell it was designed with passion!
Now I'm the proud owner of flawlessly working Picade, set just how I want it. But thanks to Pimoroni I'm now hungry to start more projects and build my own kits, so back to the store as soon as I get a good enough excuse!

Kosta P

I build many years ago an arcade bartop, back then with a pc inside etc. Really big and heavy, quality was of course good but too heavy to carry around. So i was always having in mind to build sth. smaller and even portable. This kit is really very good, the screen is really awesome. All games i tried look gread. I just love to play arcade games on it. The sound is much better as you can expect from such a small speaker. Though you have to adjust the level inside retropie. First i thought this is not the best solution, but to be honest i do not change the volume very often. Now comes the best for me, i placed a power bank with 20100mAh inside. Now the device is fully portable, which makes it really much more useful. I can sit on the sofa and play some games. Battery time seems endless, over 5 hours for sure.... For this price that's a real good offer. A big thank you to the pimeroni team. I just destroyed one pin on the power button since it is really fragile and i put too much pressure on it. Anyway... Great Product. Probably in the third iteration a 10" screen or stereo sound? I would buy it for sure again.

Anonymous

Great little system, personally I think it's great value considering other arcade options out there. 2 hour build time is optimistic though, and I'm techie, but the building is half the fun. One criticism is even with the pimoroni script, it doesn't set the new screen resolution to 1280x768, it defaults to a lower resolution, and most people wouldn't realise or know how to change this, as it looks so much crisper at the right resolution! Apart from that, great kit, bags of fun, and I look forward to showing it off to everyone!!

Michael Lebanowski

I love the Picade. A great desktop system to run all of my retro games. Great instructions and an easy build.

Wayne Jones

The Picade is a great bit of kit, although some parts are slightly difficult to assemble if you have normal size / large hands. The finished product is lovely though, fits together very well and seems pretty sturdy. It's good value for money and well designed, would definitely recommend.

Robin

Such an enjoyable project. Took me an afternoon to build and set up. Really well built and plenty of options for customising if you wanted too. For the money one off the easier and cheaper ways of having your own arcade machine at home. Sits on my desk next to my computer for a quick distraction from work. Thank you pimoroni will definitely get another project kit from you.

8-inch display –
Picade

The ultimate desktop retro arcade machine! Picade is a Raspberry Pi-powered mini arcade that you build yourself, with authentic arcade controls, a high resolution 4:3 display that's ideal for retro gaming, and a punchy speaker to hear those 8-bit game soundtracks at their best
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